Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (9 page)

“But you’re doing a great job keeping up, for your first hike.”

I blew out a breath. “I feel like a child.”

“You’ll get used to this. I’m sure it won’t be your last hike. Besides, tomorrow we’re going to see some pretty incredible ridges.”

“Is that on our way back?” I asked somewhat hopefully.

“Yeah.” He grabbed my hand again to step over a rock that was lodged in our path. “We’re going around the top of our loop right now, so tomorrow we’ll be halfway down.” He squeezed my hand when I slipped a little, pulling me straight to standing again.

When he let go of my hand, I missed it immediately, stupidly. My hand hadn’t been cold until he wasn’t holding it.

W
hen we reached
the streams Jude had talked about, Colin drank right from the source, filling up four water bottles with the stream water. He looked at me expectantly, like he expected me to copy him. But I’d watched enough nature shows late at night when I couldn’t sleep to be afraid of water direct from the source, so I accepted Jude’s offer, filling up my bottles with the water poured from his filtered water bottles. Colin didn’t say anything to me, and I knew I’d angered him.

I thought about our shopping trip. Once he’d realized I was planning to come with him, he’d assured me that I’d know no one better than him once we got up on this mountain and I couldn’t help but realize, with a disappointed sense of wonder, that he was right. Colin was concerned with being fast, even at the expense of me falling behind. But somehow, I ended day two of hiking feeling better than I had after day one.

After re-bandaging my feet and setting up our tent without help this time, I crawled into it feeling more confident in my ability to adapt to my surroundings. I once again pushed my sleeping bag to the opposite side of the tent and placed my pack between my bag and his to deter him from being close. As I fell asleep, I thought of how camping wasn’t as awful as I’d expected it to be.

The following morning, however, I awoke feeling stiff as a slab of marble.

My muscles were in protest from the last two days of hard climbing, all the way from my feet to my neck.

As I rolled in my sack, I felt the sharp pain on my upper and lower back, pain I knew was thanks to my pack, chafing against skin.

I pulled down part of my tank, exposing my shoulders and chest. And admired, with a kind of horrified wonder, the twin burns from my shoulders down my chest to the top of my sports bra. My pack was lighter than the others’, but my skin wasn’t used to the weight, and now I had bright red sores on my skin that matched my pack’s straps.

I exited my tent with a lot more struggle than I had entering it the night before, and winced as I crouched to relieve myself behind a bush. I was sure that I would fall from my squat and roll right down the hill below me, but miraculously I didn’t.

As everyone else took down their tents, I poured a bottle of water over my head and worked it through to my scalp. After, I applied nearly an entire stick of deodorant to my body in all the places I didn’t know you could sweat.

When I went to put the pack on, I dropped it almost immediately, the brush against my chafed skin shocking me with pain.

Shit.

“What’s wrong?” Jude asked, coming toward me with a mug of coffee.

I debated not telling him, not wanting to feel, once again, like a child who was out of her league. But the thought of putting on my pack without any potential relief caused me to speak. “I have some chafing,” I said, awkwardly pointing to my shoulders.

He walked closer, eyebrows knit together, and handed me his mug. “Let me see,” he said. He looked at me as if he wanted my permission and I could do nothing but nod under his golden brown gaze.

One hand came to the right side of my neck, holding me in place as he used his other hand to tug the shirt over my left shoulder.

I should have been thinking about the burn on my chest, but all I could think about was his warm, heavy hands on my skin, his eyes on my chest, and the way he smelled so damn good that all I could breathe was his scent.

“Well, that’s a good one,” he said lightly. He switched hands so he cradled the left side of my neck as he pulled the right shoulder of the shirt down. “You must feel so accomplished.”

I smiled at the thought. “Yes, burns on my feet, heels, back and shoulders. I gave it my all.”

“If you weren’t so bony, it wouldn’t have happened.”

I tilted my head to the side, the side where he cradled my neck. “No one has accused me of being bony.”

He blinked and then narrowed his eyes. He poked my collarbone with his forefinger and I winced from the pain. “They weren’t looking at you then.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I turned away. Anything to keep me from staring too long at his eyes.

One smooth, warm hand squeezed my bare shoulder before he let go. “Let’s see about putting some salve on those burns.”

I merely nodded, willing to do whatever the boy scout slash tent guy told me to do. When he returned with the ointment, I was still holding his cup of coffee.

I thrust it toward him and took the tube from his hands, not wanting to feel him rubbing it into my skin. “Thanks,” I said, popping it open and squeezing the clear goo from it. I rubbed it into each burn and while I didn’t feel instantly better, my skin felt protected.

As I passed him the tube, he asked, “You mentioned your back had burns too?”

My hand froze in midair, his hand on mine as if he would take the tube back. Again, all I could do was nod.

“Want me to get those?”

Again, dumbly, I nodded in response.

He motioned with his finger for me to turn around, so I did and lifted up my shirt. The burns were right where my shirt met my leggings, so I tugged my leggings down just an inch, but it made me feel a hundred times more exposed.

His warm hand closed on the curve of my waist to steady me as he gently rubbed the ointment into the burn. I wondered if he could feel the way my heart beat rapidly against its cage from his touch.

“Trista,” he said, his breath on my back.

I resisted the urge to arch my spine. “Yeah?”

“I’m going to bandage this back here. It’s worse than your shoulders and I hate to think of how it might look after another day rubbing against it.”

“Okay.”

He was gone for a second as he grabbed bandages from his pack and I took the opportunity to let out the breath I’d held captive in my chest as he’d touched me. When he returned, I gave him a weak smile.

“When you get home tonight, make sure you clean these,” he said as he applied the first bandage.

“Trust me, when I get home I’m taking a four-hour shower.”

“Four hours sounds a bit excessive,” he said as he placed the second bandage. “You don’t smell that bad.”

I turned around when his hands left my back and narrowed my eyes. “Thanks,” I said, my voice flat.

He smiled mischievously as he rubbed his hands together, then massaged his knuckles with the leftover ointment. “It’s a joke, Trista.” He tossed the ointment to me. “Apply this after your shower.” When I still said nothing, he added, “By the way, you smell good. Not sure what it is,” his throat moved as he swallowed hard, “but it’s good.”

I nearly dropped the tube at that, feeling my cheeks flush. I wasn’t sure what to say, so I just stared at him as he let that sink in before he turned around and headed back to the camp.

* * *

J
ude was right
, the ridges we came upon were breathtaking. Sharply, they rose from the earth and pierced the sky, gold and orange and yellow. In many places, it looked like someone had taken a giant fork and stabbed them before pulling away, leaving narrow slats of rock jutting out from the otherwise smooth wall.

We walked along one ridge before taking a rest at a scenic overlook to eat lunch. This time, we had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that we assembled right on our laps, passing the sticky jar of jelly between us all. It felt good to sit under the hot sun, on a hot rock, with my pack set aside.

As if he was feeling warmer toward me, Colin sat beside me and made small talk, asking me about the hike and how I was feeling. Something about our exchange made me think Colin was surprised I’d made the journey without much complaint.
You and me both
, I thought.

More than once, I found my eyes meeting Jude’s as Colin talked to me. Each time, I quickly looked away, the intensity of his stare too much for me to deal with. I tried to give my attention to Colin because I felt strangely guilty for having given so much attention to Jude. But when Colin hadn’t come to my aid, Jude had. And what was I supposed to do, ignore his help?

But Jude seemed onto me trying to ignore him, and he did his best to pepper the conversation with questions directed at me. I answered all of them, but was flustered by the way he cut through Colin’s questions.

Colin would ask, “Isn’t it beautiful?”

And Jude would ask, “What’s been your favorite part of the hike so far?”

And I shouldn’t have compared them, I knew that. And yet I did, every time. Colin asked me questions that required very little of me apart from a “yes” or “no” answer. And Jude asked for more.

After finishing my sandwich, I walked a little ways away from the group to sit by myself over the edge. As I looked out over the world around me, I let every emotion I’d been feeling come to the surface.

I was overwhelmed; by my surroundings, by Jude, by how much my body ached and protested from the pain I’d put it through. But I also indulged in relief for having made it this far, for hiking what Jude called a solid twenty-two miles in three days. Yes, my body had discovered muscles I didn’t know I had—they were all singing their pain like instruments in a goddamn orchestra—but my body had pushed through the pain, delivering us to the climax of the hike: these ridges that would follow us down to the end of the hike, back to the trailhead.

I debated removing my shoes to give my feet some much-needed air but after looking back at the guys I noticed they were already cleaning up from lunch.

Jude and Colin walked toward me, looking out at the same view.

“It’s sure something,” Colin said.

“There’s not a lot that can make a human feel as small as this can,” Jude added.

Why did I dissect these things so much?

I took in the rolling mountains in the distance and could make out the sunlight reflecting off of buildings on the other side of the furthest mountain. “We don’t have much more to go, right?”

“A little more than a mile down this ridge and it’ll be all flat trail back to the trailhead.”

Thank you, baby Jesus
. “Wow, already?”

Jude hiked his pack up, tightened the strap around his lower waist. “Yep. Come on,” he said, reaching a hand down to help me up from my sitting spot.

Three things happened in less than two seconds:

1. I grabbed Jude’s hand.
   
2. I pressed my hiking boot against a rock jutting out from the ledge to give me leverage.
   
3. The rock crumbled beneath my boot, sending me sliding over the ledge.
   

I couldn’t help the scream that tore from my throat as my body slid at least a foot down the rock. I heard a grunt behind me and then the sound of someone falling to the ledge, and Jude’s hand squeezed mine painfully, keeping me from sliding all the way down the cliff.

Immediately, Jude stretched his other arm out to me. “Grab it now, both hands,” he said urgently. His face was prickled with sweat, and I saw a certain fear around his eyes. I did as he instructed and his other arm went limp against the rock. “Help!” he yelled.

I let out a whimper of fear, tried fruitlessly to push up on the rock around my feet, but all that did was twist me in his grasp.

“Hold on,” he said firmly as my body spun from the force of my spin, sending my face into the rock that had been behind me.

An unintelligible sound came from my mouth then, from the pain of my face crushing rock and my arm being stretched to the point of pain. My legs couldn’t gain purchase on any of the other rock ledges, so I thrashed wildly, fear reminding me how easily I could slip from his grasp and fall to my death.

Desperately, I reached my other arm up and gripped his forearm. But sweat had prickled my palms and I slipped, my hand sliding off of his arm.

As if he’d been frozen, Colin quickly moved into action, dropping to his belly beside Jude as he hung over the ledge. He reached an arm down and clamped a hand on my forearm.

“Colin,” Jude said, exchanging glances with him. “Pull.”

Together, they pulled me up the wall and I dug my toes into the rock to give me leverage. Teddy was at their sides in a second, reaching down and grabbing my other forearm.

The moment was over in a few seconds; they pulled me back up to the ledge and far away as if they worried I’d slip over. Jude flopped onto his back and heaved several breaths. “Teddy, I need your help.”

Adrenaline was coursing through my veins like boiling water, but I was frozen to the spot as I watched Teddy walk to Jude and say, “Shit, Sommers.”

“What?” I asked, pushing myself up onto my elbows.

“His shoulder is dislocated,” Colin said, standing over Jude and looking down sideways at his arm. “Fuck.”

“Oh, no,” I said, though the words paled in comparison to the guilt and fear that climbed over me. I’d caused that. I pushed myself to standing and wanted to vomit when I saw how contorted Jude’s arm was. “Oh my god,” I said, looking away.

“Teddy, lift my arm. Don’t shove it in, I wanna see if it’ll go back in by itself.”

I had to walk a few steps away when Teddy picked up his left arm, knowing if I watched I’d pass out or puke. Or both. A few seconds later, I heard Jude say, “Good as new.”

I turned around, saw him staring at his fist as he clenched it. “Are you okay?” I asked, though it felt completely inadequate for the situation.